Three Steps to Making Smart Haiti Donations

As soon as they heard about the earthquake, Haitians in Brooklyn started making their way to Savoir Faire, the record store in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, to pool what little information anyone had. And they also brought supplies to send back home — clothing, canned fruit, ramen, cases of bottled water. By early last week, the donations had been stacked into huge piles, and a plan had come into view: the store would lead a delegation of 25 people to Haiti, to rescue the children stranded at the Life for the World orphanage in the town of Source Matelas. Doctors, nurses and anyone else who wanted to come would each carry two large suitcases stuffed with food and medical supplies.

Could any mission be more heroic?

Or less efficient?

It’s not just that professional rescue workers could navigate the situation more easily. How about checking luggage full of Cup-a-Soup and chunked pineapple in syrup? Commercial flights into Haiti were suspended, so the Savoir Faire delegation would have to fly into the Dominican Republic, where canned goods and dry rice cost less than they do in New York. Certainly less than flying them from New York. (As for the bottles of water, they will be shipped separately.) No one was sure if they would even be allowed to enter Haiti. Regardless, the store was deluged with contributions.

New Yorkers seem so eager to help that practically every community group, every religious organization, every office and even every nightclub is having some kind of fund-raiser for Haiti. It’s heartwarming. But it’s also dizzying. How is anyone supposed to make sense of all the competing appeals?

Step 1 is: ask where the money goes. “A benefit for Haiti” is not enough. Find out whom the benefit benefits. When Mark Ronson took to the D.J. booth for a party at the Thompson Hotel on Wednesday night, for example, proceeds went to the American Red Cross. And when Amy Fisher, the onetime Long Island Lolita, peeled off her clothes at the Scene in Commack, N.Y., on Thursday night, a portion of the proceeds were promised to that group, too.

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GOOD INTENTIONS At Savoir Faire, a record store in Brooklyn, donations of clothing and food for earthquake victims piled up.Credit
Eirini Vourloumis for The New York Times

It isn’t always that straightforward (or ridiculous). The Church Avenue Business Improvement District in Brooklyn, where many of New York’s Haitian immigrants live, has been directing donations to the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City. The Mayor’s Fund, in turn, on advice from the William J. Clinton Foundation, sends those checks on to the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders. Meanwhile the Red Cross might work with Haitian relief groups. Which means money could travel from an employee at the Wealthy Hostage boutique in Brooklyn to 1 Centre Street in Manhattan to E Street in Washington (with an assist from 125th Street in Harlem) on to Port-au-Prince, and perhaps finally to Cap-Haïtien. Got that?

Experts seem to agree that the only groups that can get anything done in the very short term are those with experience in Haiti — Partners in Health is a name that comes up again and again — or those with expertise in disaster relief.

But that’s just the very short term. Haiti’s needs will soon shift from emergency relief to the long process of rebuilding. Assuming you have a finite amount of money, is it better to help finance the short-term effort or the long-term? Which is more important to the people of Haiti? Which is more important to you? And is it possible, as some have lately argued, that disaster relief does more harm than good? Step 2: decide what your priorities are.

And then Step 3: figure out which groups do these things best. A number of tools can help. Charity Navigatorrates more than 5,000 mid- and large-size charities, awarding up to four stars depending on how they’re managed, how much of their money goes to overhead, how much cash they have in reserve, etc.

The night of the earthquake, I logged on to Charity Navigator and picked International Relief Fund because it sends an impressive 98.9 percent of revenue to the needy.

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A benefit at the Thompson Hotel sent money to the Red Cross.Credit
Julie Glassberg/The New York Times

Rookie mistake.

“What really matters in this situation is not their ratio of overhead to other expenses,” Katherina M. Rosqueta, executive director of the Center for High Impact Philanthropy, told me later. “It’s their experience and record of having impact in Haiti.”

In fact Charity Navigator, having been criticized for focusing only on financial efficiency, is now beginning to look at the effectiveness of the groups it rates — starting with those doing relief work in Haiti.

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If you have the time and inclination, you can click through — on charitynavigator.org, or on givewell.net or guidestar.org or greatnonprofits.org or bbb.org — and learn in great detail about what different charities offer. But most people won’t, which is why many of those Web sites include a shortlist of organizations working in Haiti. You can just close your eyes and point.

That’s basically what Haitian-Americans United for Progress, a community center in Cambria Heights, Queens, has been telling people to do. Choose your charity and write a check. “People are asking, ‘What if we want to do something directly, not deal with all the red tape?’” said Elsie Saint Louis-Accilien, the group’s executive director. “The most important thing people want to do: ‘Get me to Haiti.’ ” Instead, she suggests sending money to a school where she has personal connections.

In a city as multicultural as New York, those connections are everywhere. Ben Austin, a digital marketing consultant who lives in Park Slope, got to know a lot of Haitians through the nurse who cared for his father. One of them runs a hospital. That woman happened to be in New York last week, so Mr. Austin put out the word through his synagogue and neighborhood listserv and managed to gather 160 pounds of bandages, drugs, syringes and so on. News came on Wednesday that everything had arrived safely.

Yes, cash is more efficient, Mr. Austin knows. And yes, some may be skeptical about whether any of this will have a real impact. But the opportunity arose, so he acted. “If you choose not to help people, that’s up to you,” he said. “But that wouldn’t be my decision.”

E-mail: citycritic@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on January 24, 2010, on Page MB4 of the New York edition with the headline: Three Steps to Making Smart Haiti Donations. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe